


Mathematics

by deervelvet



Category: Gundam 00
Genre: Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 14:58:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16976721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deervelvet/pseuds/deervelvet
Summary: They’re all just solving for X. [Quick one-shot exploring the practicalities of a crew made up of such diverse humans, plus bridge crew antics!]





	Mathematics

“Hey, Chris, couldn’t you sleep eith—”

 

Lichty promptly finds his mouth blockaded by Christina’s right palm.  She didn’t even look at him; it’s a little scary, actually, how she seemed to sense him behind her.  In zero gravity where the sound of footsteps isn’t always a given, it’s easy enough to sneak up on one another.  Collisions around blind corners between floating bodies resulting in solid thuds and breathy “oh, sorry”s happens more frequently than any of them had really been prepared for aboard a ship staffed by a group of supercomputer-intelligence-confirmed geniuses and prodigies.  Mag boots, reserved typically for external hull repairs and for moving cargo in the Ptolemy’s hold, aren’t permitted in most sectors of the ship due to the delicate array of sensors and probes and other little machines sending signals and receiving ones back, and so drifting silently through the corridors of the Ptolemy is the typical form of locomotion. The conveyors along the walls make a gentle whirring noise - no louder than the occasional clattering of an escalator and even softer than a treadmill - but they aren’t always used. 

 

But Christina Sierra - there’s a woman who can feel a presence behind her with keen accuracy. It’s like a sixth sense, or like eyes in the back of her head. Or maybe Lichty’s just loud and clumsy and detectable even by someone deep in a coma, but he wants to believe he’s not.

 

“Shh,” she hisses somehow softly and sharply simultaneously, finally looking back to acknowledge him with more than just a hand slapped over his mouth like a censor.   “Check this out!”

 

Lichty searches her eyes for an answer.  They’re crinkled up at the outer corners in a hearty smile.   His eyes flick to her hand. She’s got a thumb jutted in the direction beyond them, beyond where Lichty had come from.  His eyes follow the tip of it into the room, and he realizes from their position now that she’s been hiding behind the door frame.  Peeking around it into the room. Spying.

 

And the scene in the room is… disappointingly innocuous.  It’s a sort of multipurpose room their team typically uses for pre-intervention huddles. There’s a table bolted in the center and a large display mounted in the center of it, flat so that the screen is flush with the tabletop.  There are cabinets built into the walls, because every square centimeter of this craft not devoted to the weapons system or the shielding system or the navigation or life support systems has been converted into storage space (and it’s still not enough).  Around the table, there are chairs bolted to the floor -- eight in total. In the chairs, Setsuna and Allelujah sit on one side of the table facing Lockon opposite them. 

 

From the foxlike grin on Chris’s face, Lichty had half expected to see his teammates cutting lines of cocaine on the smooth face of the embedded screen or using it to hack into some absurdly important database.  

 

But the screen is off, black and reflective of the lights overhead.  There are no drugs. There is no hacking. They aren’t even looking at porn. 

 

There’s a notebook and a pen between them, and that’s about it.

 

“What’s up?” Lichty whispers -- whispers because he feels like he’s being expected to be as stealthy as Christina at this point, although he still isn’t sure what illicit thing they’re supposed to be beholding.

 

“They’re doing algebra.”

 

Lichty blinks; it isn’t a string of words he’d exactly anticipated, and it takes him a moment to process it. Algebra. Lichty has always liked mathematics.  Elementary school arithmetic was the conception of his love of the field. Trigonometry came naturally. Statistics and Chemistry didn’t really feel like true mathematics, but he liked those, too. Calculus was a beast at its best, downright vile at its worst, but he had at least enjoyed the challenge. Algebra had been fine, too, but it occurs to Lichty that Algebra was a class he’d taken when he was, what, eleven? Twelve? 

 

“What?  Why?”

 

“He’s, like, teaching them.”

 

Lichty’s eyes narrow as they meet Chris’s beaming ones. That doesn’t seem right. 

 

Their organization is a mishmash of persons of all backgrounds and specialties and cultures. In fact, it was one of the reasons Lichty had initially found the organization so appealing; the idea that such different people from such varied histories could come together in support of a common goal was admirable. Desirable. The fact that Celestial Being had come calling for Lichty’s character to add to the tapestry that made up their band of rogues was, quite frankly, a compliment. To be aboard the same ship as doctors and nurses and astrophysicists and aeronautics engineers, to fight side-by-side with trained strategists and seasoned soldiers and maybe even assassins and hitmen — well, Lichty had taken quite some time to get over his feelings of inadequacy and accept that he had skills to offer, or he wouldn’t have been there. 

 

But to have crew aboard who can pilot the most intricate of weapons as if it is in their DNA, who can dismantle a man to little more than meat and memories in seconds, who can memorize iteration after iteration of complex tactical maneuvers and even spot the changes to conditions prerequisite for switching from Plan One-Seven-Tango to One-Seven-Uniform before receiving orders to do so — but who can’t solve for X? It just seems… 

 

“No way,” Lichty whispers, moving out of the doorway and around the wall. He doubts the Meisters can hear him; the air recirculators produce a constant white noise that dampens sound effectively. But he still whispers because he feels like he should. 

 

Christina is still smiling at him. “I swear,” she responds. “I’ve seen them in here before, too. This isn’t the first time.”

 

“How would they not know algebra?”

 

Chris shrugs. “Maybe they were just really bad at it in middle school so they’re getting caught up?” It’s more of a question than an answer. Chris seems to be enjoying the fact that she’s discovered the night lecture is occurring, but Lichty isn’t sure she’s ever thought about how nonsensical it seems. 

 

He shakes his head. “Okay, sure, but I was talking about improper integrals with Allelujah two days ago. You really think he can understand the concept of determining a finite amount of work needed to force an object infinitely into outer space but he can’t get the answer for one plus X equals three?”

 

Chris shrugs again, more grandiose this time, tossing up her hands a little. “It doesn’t really make sense to me either, but just listen.”

 

Her hand is on Lichty’s shoulder, fisting into the fabric of his flight suit and tugging him over to the door again. “Listen,” she repeats, barely audible. 

 

Lichty catches himself - barely - before he drifts fully into view, rolls his eyes at Chris’s insistence, and presses an ear near the doorway. 

 

“That’s the root?”

 

“Hm? Ah, no, that’s the vertex.”

 

“Oh, right.” Allelujah is staring hard at the notebook that Lockon has slid between him and Setsuna. He seems to be mouthing the terms; Lichty sees him repeat “vertex” a few times after Lockon says it. 

 

By comparison, Setsuna looks completely still. His fingers are twitching rhythmically, and eventually Lichty deduces that he’s using them to keep track as he counts in his head. 

 

“See?” Chris breathes in a barely audible whisper. She’s above Lichty, holding onto the door with one hand and his suit with another. She’s in his ear, close enough that he can feel her breath across his cheek. “I told you.”

 

“Yeah, okay,” Lichty acquiesces as quietly as he can. “But how do you make it into Celestial Being without understanding how a parabolas— ”

 

“Are you guys here for the lecture, too?”

 

As if acting from the same brain, Chris and Lichty jolt in perfect synchronicity at the sudden voice behind them. Chris performs a sharp about-face. Lichty tries but smacks into the wall. Chris promptly shoots him a dirty glare as if he’s blown the cover off their covert operation — as if they haven’t just been caught. 

 

Feldt takes a step back away from their apparent craziness. 

 

“Oh, Feldt,” Chris breathes in relief - relief that is short-lived as she suddenly looks quite concerned that they’ve attracted the boys’ attention. Planting her heel on the wall and her palms against Feldt’s shoulders, Chris kicks off and shoves them both around the corner and into the hallway. Lichty scrambles to follow, catching a glimpse of the confusion on Feldt’s wide-eyed face. He can’t tell if they’ve been discovered, but he’s pretty sure Lockon would have called them out on it if they had. 

 

“So do you know what’s going on in…?” Chris, once again, has a thumb thrust past Lichty, towards the meeting room. 

 

“Uh,” Feldt sputters. “Lockon’s just been tutoring us in maths.”

 

“Hah!” Chris cries triumphantly. “I knew it!” She’s facing Lichty now, catty grin and all. “Told you.”

 

“Feldt,” Lichty begins, more confused now than ever. She’d said “us” — she’s part of this study group, too? “I don’t… I mean, I guess I don’t understand. I swear I’ve heard you all run calculations before.”

 

“W-Well sure,” Feldt seems to defend herself, and Lichty feels a pang of guilt. “I know how to do some calculations that are vital to our operations, but, well….” Her voice trails off contemplatively as if she’s not sure she wants to say what’s on her mind. 

 

The look Chris is shooting Lichty now is a dirty one. A “great going, see what you’ve done?” one. He throws up his hands in a retaliatory “I’ve no idea what’s going on” gesture. 

 

“You guys know I was pretty much born and raised here on the Ptolemaios. I never really got the chance to attend school or anything like a normal kid. The knowledge I have is all things I need to know to help Celestial Being, but I… well, I’ve missed some stuff along the way, I guess.”

 

The pang of guilt Lichty felt earlier multiplies, although he’s not entirely sure why. He feels like he’s done something insulting. Maybe it’s the way Feldt’s voice hinted at envy when she’d said “normal kid” combined with the knowledge that he, himself, would probably be classified as such. More or less — aside from the parts where he was raised by his grandparents in a body more machine than flesh after the Solar Wars took almost everything from him. But, perhaps for children of the Solar War, that was normal. 

 

He graduated from public school, and that’s all he means by “normal”. It’s an experience Feldt never got to enjoy, and Lichty and Chris have stumbled upon what seemingly was to remain a secret in a way that he can’t help but feel was inappropriate.

 

Feldt’s looking towards the meeting room now. “I don’t know about the other two. Setsuna and Allelujah— I don’t know if they ever got to go to school or whether they’re like me and they only know what’s important for them to know for their roles here in Celestial Being.” She looks back to Chris. “They’re really smart. They already know a lot of the things Lockon’s been telling us, too, but sometimes they just don’t know there are names for formulas, or that a hypotenuse is called a hypotenuse. They’re just like me; they missed a few steps along the way.”

 

When it seems that Feldt has finished her explanation, Lichty looks to Chris. Chris is looking back. They’re locked in a staring contest sharing a look of sheepish speechlessness, seeming to urge one another “I’m not saying anything,  _ you _ say something.”

 

Chris cracks first. 

 

“Oh!” she says with a weird, forced smile. “That makes sense.”

 

“Yeah!” Lichty chimes in. He opens his mouth to add on to that sentiment, but he can’t come up with anything else to say and instead blurts out a second “Ye-eah,” trailing this one out as if he’s putting the pieces together. But Feldt has given them a clear picture already; there’s nothing to put together. He’s solved for her X. He hopes the egg on his face will wash off in the shower. 

**Author's Note:**

> I’d kind of wanted this one to be a little longer and dig a little deeper and be a true character study, but it ended up kind of shallow. Oh well — that’s how one shots go!
> 
> Anyhow, I’ve always had the headcanon that, because so many of the crew had an “alternative childhood experience”, those with a more standard education like to pitch in to help once they find out (much to Veda’s chagrin probably) that their fellow crewmates may have skipped a few chapters. Maybe they can figure out how to leave Earth’s surface, but the area of a sphere? How to write a sonnet? Twenty first century history? Mysteries. 
> 
> Of the three here, I’d imagine Feldt has the strongest educational foundations; CB probably taught her pretty well. Allelujah would maybe only have an education up through what he got from the Institute before crash landing on Earth and (going by 00P, apparently) becoming transient, which wouldn’t even be a complete elementary school education (there was never any mention of hyper-intelligence programming or anything like that mentioned in the series and Hallelujah is my idiot baby, so I’m striking that off as an option). Setsuna probably was the worst off in terms of things like literacy and hard sciences at the start; even before becoming a child soldier, regular school attendance in a war-torn nation would likely have been difficult. 
> 
> I also like to think Lockon found out about Setsuna first. Maybe Tieria complained (pre-Interventions) about how slowly Setsuna reads the mission plans and Lockon got the feeling that there was a deficiency? Maybe Setsuna approached Lockon first with a firm, “Teach me”? Hmmm... Who knows!
> 
> I also reject the inconsistent gravity situation in the Ptolemy that we’re shown in the show! Float on, you funky lil’ space cowboys!
> 
> Timeframe here is S1. Late enough that the crew are all comfortable with one another, early enough that things haven’t started to get too dire. 
> 
> Half debating moving this into a collection for slice-of-life flavored drabbles set aboard the Ptolemy, because I have so many WIPs that fit the bill.


End file.
